


Ivanovna

by AHopefulVoice



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Gen, POV Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 05:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHopefulVoice/pseuds/AHopefulVoice
Summary: It started when the Red Skull called her Natasha, daughter of Ivan.





	Ivanovna

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously there are spoilers. This is probably shit but I saw the movie last night and had to wake up hella early this morning for work and couldn’t focus all day because of this scene. So here we go.

**Ivanovna**

It started when the Red Skull called her _Natasha, daughter of Ivan_.

For most of her life, Natasha had not known who her parents were.She didn’t even know if Natalia Alianovna Romanova was the name given to her at birth or if it was assigned when she was adopted into the Red Room.There was a period in her life when she wondered if Ivan Petrovich Bezhukov was her biological father.  _Dyadya Vanya_ , he had introduced himself.She was young and she was frightened and hungry and cold and this strange man said he was a friend of her parents.

She couldn’t remember if that was true.

But then, nine years ago, she went back to Russia.Called in the few favors she still had.Learned that—despite all the lies they told her—Natalia Alianovna Romanova was, indeed, her real name.

That, of course, sent her on a whirlwind tour around Russia to find out who she was, who her family had been.Who she could be.

She found her parents.Two gravestones by a chain link fence in Volgograd.Their names were barely etched onto the stone but still read: _Alian Nikolaevich Romanov_ and _Evgenia Borisovna Romanova_.She left flowers.

Natasha was barely on speaking terms with Clint at that point.He had stuck by his family—as he had a right to do—and stuck on the other side of that stupid, stupid fight between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.There was no one for her to talk to about this revelation, about where she would go next.

She had burned all of her covers, called in all her favors, played her trump card.Natasha was left with a broken family, the only family she had ever known, and she was barely the glue to keep it all together.

But Clint.

He called her every month or so, just to check in, make sure they were still friends.Of course they were.There was only one thing they could be other than friends and it sure as hell wasn’t enemies.She would ask about Lila and Cooper and baby Nathaniel, about Laura and Lucky and all of their other animals on the farm.

Clint would ask if she had heard from Bruce.

“No,” she would say, forcing a small grin on her face to make it sound like she didn’t think she had made a mistake, “not yet.”

And really, that was the biggest mistake of her life.Bruce Banner genuinely was a nice guy, and she had taken advantage of that.She tried to force herself into loving him because the man she loved didn’t—couldn’t—love her back.And that was okay.Really.Or so she told herself.

She tried to reason it out, playing with his emotions and making him (and herself) believe that they were both monsters and maybe they could be happy together.

Only Natasha was the monster.

What kind of woman falls for another woman’s husband?

But Clint had taken her hand and told her to run and, God, if she hadn’t fallen for him on the spot.Not really, of course.She hated his guts for weeks.

She owed him a debt.At first.

Natasha Romanoff was the kind of woman who paid her debts.She paid him with her heart.And despite the odd moment here and there for a cover, Clint treated her like no more than a friend.Almost distantly, like he had to remind himself.

Of course, there were those weak moments like in Budapest where they gave in and the world nearly came apart because of it.

And Loki—when he fucked with Clint’s head, it was like he _needed_ her, for the first time.Like he really understood her, though she knew that was bullshit because when had he ever not understood her?

The trouble that came with the Accords probably could have been avoided.Definitely _should_ have been avoided.The consequences didn’t have to be paid.Clint hung up his bow. Natasha didn’t see him or hear from him for months.

Barely on speaking terms.Clint was under house arrest and had no desire to help when he finally had his family exactly like he always dreamed.

Then Thanos happened.

He spiraled.Natasha was left with Steve to pick up the pieces, especially after Tony returned and started his own family.She was tasked with coordinating everyone on Earth and Carol Danvers out in the rest of the universe.She was getting emails from a raccoon.If the pain of losing her best friend and all the family she had ever known hadn’t filled her heart with a certain ache, it would seem like a dream.

_I used to have nothing, and then I got this family._

Steve didn’t understand.Tony didn’t understand.Nobody understood, except Clint, but he was off being a vigilante and, honestly, he frightened her more then than when he was under Loki’s spell.He was unpredictable and it took years for her and Rhodey to track him down.

But she found him in Tokyo and brought him back.Found him like he had found her all those years ago: broken and bloodied and full of grief and confusion and fear.

The necklace he had bought her as a joke had become a talisman for her over the years.Even when he returned to her she couldn’t bring herself to take it off, just tucked it under her shirt whenever he was around.

Natasha sat on a rock a few feet away from the cliff’s edge, fingers around that silver arrow.

Really, any sane person would see that Clint would have to be the sacrifice.Laura wasn’t here for him to lose, but he always had been and always would be the most important person in the universe to her.

But she couldn’t bear for him to lose his family, for his family to lose him when they returned, after this worked.Because this would work.

It had to.

But maybe.

Maybe.

He had told her that she was his best friend, that he could trust her with things that he could never tell Laura.

He had even said that he loved her.She knew it wasn’t in the way that she loved him, but maybe the sacrifice could work with friendship.Thanos had given his daughter for the Soul Stone, and that wasn’t a romantic love.Was Natasha the most important, most precious thing to Clint?No, and it was foolish to believe that.

But she could at least give him a chance.

_Natasha, daughter of Ivan._

The Red Skull knew that Ivan Petrovich had raised her, and he had to know that her biological father’s name was not Ivan.She was not Natalia Ivanovna.

She never had been Natalia Ivanovna.

And yet he was the man who raised her.The man who had turned her into a monster.

_I used to have nothing, and then I got this family._

A broken family, now.But with the Soul Stone, Clint could get his family back.She needed him to be whole.She couldn’t live with herself if she had to face Laura and their children without him.

Ivan had created a monster, but Clint had stood with her as she remade herself into someone she could be proud of.He had saved her, had become the only family she had ever known.Ivan was not that family.

Clint.

Clint had to survive.

Finger tips against the cool metal, pulse pounding in her throat, Natasha knew what had to be done, what she had to do.

It was all for him.


End file.
